


zonnestraal

by arromanches (jehanne)



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: ... that's... about it, Bittersweet, F/M, Kissing, brief moments of lightness in Eindhoven, in which i revamp a fic from 2013, we're working with what we have people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:33:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehanne/pseuds/arromanches
Summary: In her dreams, it was always summer.Grant/OC, circa Eindhoven.
Relationships: Charles Grant/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arethosedustyjumpwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arethosedustyjumpwings/gifts).



> Rediscovered this on my FF account and decided to fluff the pillows.
> 
> A big thank you to [captainkilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/profile) for her help with the Dutch-language portions of this fic as well as with names and general insight (and Chuck gifsets. Seriously. Check them out), and to [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/profile) for her helpful feedback. Any inaccuracies are entirely my own. Endless heart emojis to [switchingfoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/switchingfoot/profile) for her comments, and for being my favorite person to see pop up in a GoogleDoc. Bonus thank you to Ludovico Einaudi's _I Giorni_ , which I listened to on repeat while writing this.
> 
> For [arethosedustyjumpwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arethosedustyjumpwings/profile), always, with love.
> 
> zonnestraal — "sunbeam" in Dutch

Eindhoven  
Early September  
1944

In her dreams, it was always summer.

A picnic in the Stadswandelpark, surrounded by green. André and her mother laughing, Theo on her father’s knee. The muslin sails of his toy boat. Blackberry juice staining her fingers.

When she woke, the sunrise was almost enough to convince Francisca she was still warm. Light fell in slanted shapes on the wall, the color of a summer apricot cut open on her mother’s table. A memory of sweetness, of brandied fruit her father would prepare. The preserving liquor her parents served as a special drink on holidays, the sip her father would sneak her with a smile.

What a gift it was, her bedroom bathed in light.

With her father gone Francisca knew, too heavily, the blessing of a sunrise. Jan de Ruyter had died of a heart attack a year before the Germans came. His picture rested opposite André’s on the table, and she kissed both before rising to get dressed. With André gone, she knew, too well, the heaviness of hope. Her brother had made his home in Utrecht as a student. Four years into the occupation, men were all but gone from the city streets, sent east for forced labor, or else in hiding. The last they’d heard, André had been one of them. 

In a frame on her bedside table, his eyes remained trapped in smoky brown sepia, gazing purposefully towards some faraway unknown. It was so much harder to imagine him outside of the frame, scattered freckles and red hair. Where he closed his eyes at night. If he still had somewhere, if he was that lucky. That careful.

The clothes in half of Francisca’s dresser belonged mostly to André, and to her father. The morning chill meant she pulled on one of her his old sweaters, gray wool and smelling of cedar, and took one of André’s from childhood for Theo, a forest green.

At seven years old, the only memories he had were of deprivation. Sometimes she found it difficult to look at her brother’s face, bright blue eyes watered down by hunger, a resigned smile that tugged on her heart.

“Theo? Wake up, _schatje_.” She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, the pink bow curve of his lip wobbling slightly. He opened his eyes with the faintest hint of a smile, yanking the threadbare sheet up to his nose.

She pulled the sweater over his arms, his body that had lost the fullness of childhood, hastened by months of increasing scarcity. The wooden staircase creaked under Francisca’s boots, and she tried to keep hold of Theo’s hand as he ran down in front of her to the kitchen.

“Quiet on the stairs, Theo!”

Their mother’s exasperated voice faded as Francisca’s eyes lit on the small pan on the stove, her stomach growling.

At forty-three years old, Johanna de Ruyter could have passed for ten years younger; she didn’t like the tiny strands of silver that had started to appear in her blonde hair, even though her daughter insisted that they only made her more beautiful. She spooned out two bowls of weak porridge for her children, and had to stop herself from going to the icebox to rummage for food that she knew wasn’t there.

Francisca instead reached for a small, mealy apple and handed her bowl to Theo. 

“Toe maar,” she said softly, giving him an encouraging smile. _Go on._

Theo eyed his sister suspiciously. After a moment Johanna nodded her approval, but she silently admonished Francisca with tired gray eyes. 

Her voice after a moment was worn, but still sketched with affection. “Here, _Sterretje_ , have just a little bit.” Her use of Francisca’s middle name — Sterre, to Sterretje, little star — made Francisca’s heart squeeze painfully. Johanna scraped the last of the porridge out of the pan and onto a chipped plate. After a reluctant spoonful Francisca added the rest to Theo’s bowl as her mother sighed.

“Wouter Bakker says that the Allies will be here within the month,” Francisca announced, ignoring her mother’s expression and trying to lighten the mood. Johanna shook her head in response. 

“Not now, Sterre. Not in front of your brother.”

“Why not?” Francisca finally took a bite of the apple and her mouth puckered into a grimace. She knew why not, knew perfectly well. But something about this day, about the September sunrise, felt different.

“It doesn’t do to be interested in the daydreams of fifteen year-old boys.” The authority in Johanna’s voice was solely for Theo’s benefit; she and her daughter walked around the truth in their minds, the same truth that they whispered at night and in the mornings before Theo woke. That the Bakkers had a radio hidden in their basement., under the floorboards. That Mr. Bakker’s young son, the same boy Francisca remembered watching as a toddler, was a member of one of the resistance cells in Eindhoven. There were things Johanna did too that were hidden to Francisca herself, that she only knew would put them all in danger. But she wanted to know, wanted to help. 

When her mother rose and started to busy herself with the dishes, Francisca knew not to push the point further. She set Theo up on their father’s armchair and Theo’s toy boat, and made a note to fix the torn sail once they had more fabric to spare. 

The rest of her day was filled by sewing, the pull of needles and thread. Johanna’s business as a seamstress had slowed considerably over the past four years, but she kept busy, kept her head down. Repairs were still needed on older pieces, when new babies needed christening gowns, when life, still, demanded what it always did. 

When it was time to turn in for the evening, Francisca lingered at her window. Now, a different light fell across the room, the moon irrepressibly bright. The crisp night air seemed to chill the very stars in the sky. Her mother was right; she didn’t know how much longer it would be like this. André had always told her to have faith in time, _geduld is een schone zaak, Cisca_. Patience is a good thing. Standing on the edge, she had no choice but to believe him.


	2. Chapter 2

Eindhoven  
18 September  
1944

The streets were finally breathing again. 

Eindhoven was a joyous, whirling, whooping parade, the orange of flags and banners mixed with the olive green of the soldiers’ uniforms and their tanks.

Francisca felt the energy radiating from the air, and instinctively she shrunk back, closed her eyes, willed herself to be brave enough to dive into the fray. Theo tugged at her hand, tripping over his words in excitement.

A man handed Theo a small flag on a stick, and over his shoulder she saw Johanna talking with friends. How strange it was, to see them outside, talking, at a café table again, like it was something they did every week. She gave Francisca a brilliant smile and waved, turning back to her conversation. When Francisca looked down again, Theo was gone. Panic thumped in her chest, and she began weaving through the crowd. _Surely he couldn’t have gotten very far._

To her intense relief, she soon spotted her brother on the knee of an American soldier, posing for a portrait with several others. The men were just as boisterous as the civilians, talking and laughing, elbowing each other to look at the camera. Only a few years older than Wouter Bakker. Heartbreakingly young.

Theo ran over after the shutter’s _click_ and threw his arms around her waist. Francisca ran a hand through his curls as he looked up at her.

“Why aren’t you over there with the other girls?”

She looked across the street to see a group of women crowded around several paratroopers, proffering what looked to her like paper for autographs, and leaving smudges the color of summer cherries on their cheeks. 

“Well,” she began, but he had already moved on to another, more pressing question. 

“Where’s Mama?”

Francisca bent down and held Theo gently by the waist, pointing to Johanna and her friends. “Over there.” And with that he wriggled free and ran off again, before she had even said go. She watched Johanna take him on her lap and smiled. 

On the corner stood two paratroopers amidst the crush of civilians, talking amongst themselves. The taller one, with hair like pale fire, looked so much like André that Francisca’s heart nearly stopped. She knew that today he’d be laughing, if he were here. Smiling, sharing a beer with his friends, with these men, carrying Theo on his shoulders. _Please, let him be safe._

Her wish is interrupted when someone collides with her shoulder from behind. Pushed by the overeager crowds perhaps, or a stumble on an uneven stone in the pavement. She turned around to see one of the soldiers from the photographer’s picture, with blue eyes and dark blonde hair.

“I’m so sorry, Miss,” he said, his voice rising above the din. “Didn’t mean to get you like that.”

“It’s...it’s all right.”

He leaned in as a reflex, trying to hear her better. “You sure?”

She nodded, a smile forming on her lips. _If only I had the courage to kiss him,_ she thought. _To do something impulsive for once._

His face was still so close to hers. It didn’t take much to lean forward, to press her lips to his cheek, and to pull away just as quickly. _There._

It scared her a little, her heart beating so wildly, but thrilled her too, how she’d felt him smile under her mouth. And he was still smiling, eyes sparkling. 

She wanted to stretch this moment out like molasses, like honey. She found herself leaning forward again, a thought at the back of her mind about remembering this day the rest of her life. The crowds, their joy. The light of the sun. The sweetness of his mouth against hers, _here, here, here._

Suddenly there was a tug at his elbow, a soldier with dark eyes and a sharp jaw, _c’mon lover boy,_ but he paid him no mind. 

“Hey, Chuck!”

His hands were around her waist now, hers knotted in his hair.

_“SERGEANT GRANT!"_

And with that they let go of each other, with sheepish smiles and half-laughs, his fingers slipping out of her grasp.

“See ya, sweetheart.” His eyes clouded then, his mission remembered, the objectives that lay close ahead. 

She nodded again. “Be careful.” The only thing she could think of to say. “Please.”

One last smile, bright and joyful, was the last she saw of him as he disappeared into the crowd. 


	3. Chapter 3

Eindhoven  
September 19  
1944

The Germans dropped their bombs the following day. 

Their planes targeted those who had just come through, the routes of British tanks through the city. 

A word like _failure_ paled in the face of bombs. It felt nothing like shaking bones, or buildings being blown apart. Looked nothing like fires burning, all across the city. 

Francisca held Theo close as they huddled in the basement, with their mother close beside them. She prayed for André, for the spirit of her father, the hinged frame the only thing she’d grabbed in the moment before they’d run downstairs. For her soldier, if she could think of him as that.

 _Where was he now?_ Was he crouched in terror as they were? Was he as scared? It hurt too much to think of the worst, that he was wounded, or dead. Lying still on the ground and so far from home, with no one to hold his hand.

It didn’t seem real now, the relief of yesterday. The warmth she had felt near him, like all her dreams of summer stood in front of her, laughing. She had to tell herself it was real, it had been real. She’d tasted it. How fierce in her heart now, this hope. That he would smile like that again, like a sun-flooded room. That she would too, somehow. How light.

**Author's Note:**

> pls don't hesitate to come say hi on tumblr [@shoshiwrites](https://shoshiwrites.tumblr.com/)


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